Friday, August 08, 2008

Restoring Old Posts

The voice of the people has been heard. I will restore the posts, hopefully by tomorrow. This is not what I would prefer, but I respect that almost everyone else feels differently, other than those anonymous posters who were happy for the blog to go anyway. As I mentioned before, because I laboriously deleted the posts one-by-one, I needed a tool to capture the actual URLs for each post, which isn't as easy as it sounds since the URL did not always match the title of the blog. Thanks to Peter Ecklersley, who developed very cool tool to capture the URLs, and the great Blogger support team, almost all have been recaptured. They were recaptured as drafts though and there are posting limits that have to be overridden, so some work needs to be done yet. I will also try and cross reference those posts that were not captured and add them later.

Because so many people wrote asking for an archive, I will also compile an archive and send it to those who asked for it. That archive will not contains comments because the actual posts will be available for people to access. Deleting the comments from the archived posts will helpfully reduce the size of the archive, and avoid unanswered questions about the status of comments.

Thanks all of you for your kind words, and I hope restoring the links will show will my appreciation.

34 comments:

I'm really glad you've decided to do this. Thanks for listening to us, and if we can't have any new posts, it's good at least to be able to console myself by reading the old ones, especially from before I became a reader. Thank you, Dr. Patry.

PS I still think a role as a writer in a another setting than your blog would be a good way to move focus away from your role at google. I suggested boingboing.net here http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2008/08/end-of-blog.html#c1533780268291558286 but maybe http://arstechnica.com/index.ars would be even better.

thank you for restoring your work. I first heard about your blog through a story about its deletion.

which I was thinking was a shame considering how hard these issues are and how desperately we need clear voices in this culture war. Your writing is a beacon for those interested in protecting rights of expression, and as far as I'm concerned, we need as many bright lights as we can get during these dark ages.

Have you published any books? Thought about republishing this blog through Kindle? I just learned about you from the story on slashdot.org, and am sorry I missed reading and learning from what you have to offer.

Dr. Patry,I am not a reader of your blog. However when PJ at Groklaw posted you had been abused to the point of where you decided it wasn't worth it, it saddened me. PJ described you in glowing terms and I came to know you, abet a little belatedly.

People who have feelings, who care, can be spiritually wounded by the slings and arrows flung at them from those who have nothing better to do. Or maybe it's those who have an agenda to discredit the writers, the honest people who are trying to make a difference.

A wise man once told me it takes more than one hundred "atta boys" to make up for one "uh oh". It is in our human nature to feel the digs more deeply than the accolades.

Please, those like you aren't that plentiful. Thanks for returning to the front lines.

Mr. Patry, I began to see the possibilities of me changing my perspectives through reading your posts. What a wonderful thought that was! Please provide me with the link/file of the archive to: devoted1 atsign gmail . com

Thank you for your willingness to post the archive: I have been reading avidly for two years and would like to be added to the list of those to whom you'll send the archive in its entirety. In case you--or anyone else--cares to know I am particularly interested in the history of theatre at copyright law. (Yes, once long ago, people cared about whether and how they could render as property the intangible moment of performer-audience exchange that is theatre!)

Bill, would you care to offer any suggestion as to which copyright blog we geeks should turn to next?

Thank you for your efforts to restore the blog and for all that you've done!

@ Variegated: Mr. Patry has published several wonderful treatises/books on copyright law (including his recent 7 volume treatise). You can see the book list and links to articles at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Patry. Mr. Patry provides updates to his recent treatise at http://patrytreatise.blogspot.com/.

OK, I am done restoring the old posts. I cleaned some of them up -- typos and the like -- and deleted a few irrelevant ones, like "no post tomorrow", or ones that didn't work and had nothing to do with copyright (like "can Cats Sense Death?), something I periodically did in the past.

Now that the posts are restored, I will do the promised archive -- but first I have to go to Australia and then a week's vacation. I will try to finish before the (Jewish) New Year (Sept. 30), and will send it to those who have emailed me. Many thanks as always for your wonderful thoughts.

Thank you for your generosity over the years - you created a public square for the exchange of ideas where intellect, diversity, and humor challenged the ordinary. I am especially grateful that you created an archive - my thesis on the antibootlegging legislation cited your Blog, animating the legislative history of the statute. The archive will allow your insights as developed in the Blog to live on. May your treatise and archive continue to illuminate the cosmos of copyright law.peace and best wishes,Mary Zachar

Dear Professor Patry;you mentioned that you were providing an archive to devoted fans who requested it. I would like to have one. I practice copyright law and am sad that you've ended this brilliant blog. I am also a dissenter; there are many of us out here. And, it might interest you to know that I studied international copyright law at Yeshiva U Cardozo with your former student when I got my LLM from that fine institution. Kindest regards,Kathleen Williamsonwww.williamsonandyoung.com

There are many of us who in fact find this resource invaluable. I had actually wanted to see if you had written anything about the Jacobsen v. KAM decision (I was going to be speaking on a radio show and figured I could namedrop your blog as said great resource) and found it closed up.

I empathize with your predicament and appreciate it's depth but wanted you to know a 30 year old multimedia content producer (me) discovered your blog today while using the best search engine in the world (so good it has achieved the ultimate brand recognition: becoming a verb). When the page loaded I was instantly excited at the topic and then quickly deflated as I read the recent posts. I immediately became angry at all your detractors and was saddened most of all by #2 in the 'End of the Blog' post. As an individual who knows nothing of your distinguished career (thus unable to conflate your writings and your professional endeavors), I wanted to encourage you to keep contributing in whatever manner you deem fit to a discourse that desperately needs rational, forward-thinking voices like your own, precisely because voices like yours seem outnumbered.

I just want to add my voice of thanks to you for restoring those posts. I had saved a number of links to specific posts that touched on topics of special interest to me, and I was so sorry that your voice of wisdom and reason would no longer be available. Thanks for restoring the posts!

(sorry for the anonymous post--blogger won't accept my password and show my identity)

Dr. Patry, please send me a copy of the archive to teachertools at gmail dot com -- I am so sad I am coming to your blog so late and that you are already leaving. As a college librarian who also received a music degree, copyright is incredibly fascinating to me. And lately it's just downright depressing. I will enjoy reading through the archives and gleaning what I can after-the-fact. Thank you!

Richie Ramone loses his appeal to the supreme court for copyright infringement. The court ruled he signed over all rights to his songs years earlier.

2008 NY Slip Op 32540(U)RICHARD REINHARDT (pka RICHIE RAMONE and RICHIE BEAU), an individual, Plaintiff,v.THE JOHN FAMILY TRUST OF 1997, TACO TUNES, INC., A New York Corporation; RAMONES PRODUCTIONS, INC., A New York Corporation; HERZOG & STRAUSS, A New York Partnership; IRA HERZOG, an individual; and DOES 1-10 inclusive, Defendants.0601064/2004Sequence Number 002Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County.Filed September 19, 2008.Motion Date May 12, 2008.September 18, 2008. JANE S. SOLOMON, Judge. From 1983 to 1987, plaintiff Richard Reinhardt was a drummer for the legendary New York City punk rock band, The Ramones. Reinhardt seeks to recover royalties he claims are due to him from The Ramones record sales. Defendants are The John Family Trust of 1997 (John Trust), which represents the interests of the estate of now-deceased John Cummings (Cummings), a member of The Ramones who performed under the name "Johnny Ramone"; Ramones Productions, Inc. (Ramones Productions), a corporate entity used to operate non-publishing aspects of The Ramones's business activities; Taco Tunes, Inc. (Taco Tunes), which acted as the...

Thanks for restoring your old posts! Would you be willing to send a copy of the archive my way as well.

You wouldn't remember me, but you came and spoke to my Copyright class taught by Prof. Oliar at the University of Virginia School of Law back in Spring 2007. I enjoyed your guest lecture and have enjoyed reading your blog.

I'm also about to dive into your treatise as I'm writing a copyright research paper. I'm glad to have yours in addition to Nimmer.

About Me

This is a personal blog, not a Google blog. It is about my book Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, published by Oxford University Press. Please don't attribute anything in the blog or the book to Google, which employs me.